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Cauliflowers, with Parmesan Cheese
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons. or 3 cauliflowers, rather more than pint of white sauce, 2 tablespoonfuls of grated Parmesan or other cheese, 2 oz. of fresh butter, 3 tablespoonfuls of breadcrumbs. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 6d. Cleanse and boil the cauliflowers by the preceding recipe, drain them, and dish them with the flowers standing upright.
Have ready the above proportion of white sauce; pour sufficient of it over the cauliflowers just to cover the top; sprinkle over this some rasped cheese and bread-crumbs, FRIED CAULIFLOWERS. and drop on these the butter, which should be melted, but not oiled. Brown with a salamander, or before the fire, and pour round, but not over, the flowers the remainder of the sauce, with which should be mixed a small quantity of grated cheese.
IME. Altogether, hour.
A gratin finished under top heat rather than baked through: the cauliflower is boiled first, sauced, crumbed and browned only on the surface. The whole thing hangs on not letting the heads collapse in the pot.
- QuantityThe ingredient list is for two or three cauliflowers, and the printed text gives serving numbers of both four and six, so treat the yield as approximate. Trim to leave the head whole with a short stalk so it will stand upright on the dish.
- Boiling the headsThe "preceding recipe" is the plain boiled cauliflower that precedes this one: whole heads in salted water, boiled only until a knife enters the stalk with slight resistance. Anything longer and it will slump when sauced. Drain upside down and let steam escape or the sauce will thin on the plate.
- White sauceA little over a pint, roughly 600 ml. The recipe does not give the sauce here; whatever coating white sauce is used should coat the back of a spoon, as a thin one will run straight off the florets.
- Cheese"Rasped" cheese is simply finely grated. The recipe allows "Parmesan or other cheese"; Parmesan browns without going stringy, and a hard aged Gruyere or pecorino behaves much the same. Two tablespoons is modest -- double it if you want a pronounced cheese flavour.
- Melted but not oiledButter is "oiled" when it has separated and gone greasy-clear. Melt it gently until just liquid and still opaque, then spoon it over the crumbs so they fry rather than soak.
- Instead of a salamanderA salamander was an iron plate heated in the fire and held over food to brown it. Use a grill or broiler at high heat with the dish 4 to 6 inches from the element, 2 to 4 minutes, watching it — the crumbs go from gold to black quickly.
- Sauce round, not overThe remaining sauce, with a little cheese stirred in, is poured around the base so the browned crust stays crisp. Warm it through first; cold sauce on a hot dish is the usual failure here.
- TimingThe time line is damaged in the text ("Altogether, hour"), so the total is uncertain -- most of it is boiling and draining in any case. The dish does not hold; brown it as it goes to the table.
Cauliflower with cheese and crumbs, browned on top, is a long-standing English gratin, and Beeton's household books gave it a settled form: boil whole, sauce, crumb, brown. Beeton's recipe allows Parmesan "or other cheese." The instruction to brown "with a salamander, or before the fire" belongs to hearth and range cookery; the salamander, a heated iron on a handle, did the work a grill does now. The average cost of 1s. 6d. is one of the standard costings Beeton attached to each recipe.